Dock
It has been in the 70’s here lately!!! I’m not going to complain about perfect weather, but I am honestly missing that harsh biting cold…ice…snow. I mean, it IS winter, right?!
Dexie helping to demonstrate the “before” in the garden
As you can see, you can barely tell where the garden ends and the lawn begins.
Another “before” shot; note the ,messy garden beds filled with leaves in the foreground
Butkus and a close-up of how the ground looked in the garden beds; couldn’t even see the dirt!
Starting to edge the plots…
And rake the leaves (see the pile in the background)
Trees budding; crazy!
More t-shirt weather
Taking a break
We burned the leaves in all the plots.
Burning the plots is such a great way to clean them up and I figure the ashes add to the soil. Some of the plants get a little charred (e.g. mint, lemon balm, strawberries) but in my experience they bounce back pretty quickly. For areas you don’t want to burn you can just rake the leaves around them and the fire passes them by (e.g. we kept the fire away from the lilac bushes and the asparagus patch).
Smoky silhouette
Roasting Garlic; Ha! (smelled divine!)
She says her class is starting a project about fire so she will bring a print out of this picture to show them how fire can be used in the garden.
AFTER!!! Smoochie gets 90% of the credit for this!
Ahhh I love the look of cleaned up and freshly edged garden plots!
Butkus lounging on the soil
Chasing bunnies
Bun-Bun is the fastest (and for the record, the meanest)
Puff-Puff
Dexie has been very nice to the bunnies: even helping to herd them around the yard:
And even more Bunny-love:
Bunny valentines
Sunset
Happy Monday! Hope your week is off to a good start!
(oops…”imprinted” ;) )
We use raked up leaves to make leaf mould for the garden. It’s brilliant stuff. Just make a wire cage in a corner somewhere (butting onto the deer proof fence?) out of chicken wire and throw your raked leaves into it. They will rot down and form “soil” and this is absolutely amazing stuff for the garden. Much better than ashes. Give it a go next time you are cleaning up your garden bed. I love your rabbits. They are beautiful. We can’t have any other kind of pets as Earl has a deep inprinted need to hunt. We came home from school the other day and he had dug out a large rock from a rock wall. There was dirt EVERYWHERE and he had mud all over his front paws where he had been furiously digging. Earl isn’t a digger but “something” had invaded Poland and Earl wasn’t going to let it get away! It must have gotten away as while we were watering narnia and Sanctuary, he was trotting around intently scouring the garden to find it. My guess is it was one of the large blue tongue lizards that sometimes wander through the fence. They have a seriously hard bite so I am guessing it gave as good as it got! It is lovely to see Dexie with your rabbits. Bezial would be very different than Earl with animals but as Earl is king of the roost (well he thinks he is ;) ) nothing gets to venture inside the house fence without serious problems from Earl.
Ok. I will find a spot to let the leaves pile up and decompose. Fire just has that convenience factor, ha! But we get a LOT of leaves and I do have an idea for a spot where we could do that. I love the bunnies. So I will share a bunny story in response to your Early story about Bun-Bun; who thinks he is the king of the roost here. He is the shiny black one; I like to call him little Rottweiler (since he has similar markings) or the little black stallion. haha So: A few nights ago the boys decided to “punish” Bun-Bun because he was biting/being mean to Puff-Puff and Butkus. So they put him in the travel cage to separate him from the others. They put it on the side of the main cage wedged under a wooden thing so he couldn’t open up the top of it. Well it started raining and Smoochie went outside around 10PM to make sure Bun-Bun was out of the rain so he goes over and the cage is empty!! So he is standing there in the dark calling “Bun-bun! Bun-Bun!” and the bunny hopped OUT OF THE WOODS and came to him! HAhahahah It is very shocking that he 1. survived 2. came when called. We have SOOOO many coyotes, foxes, hawks and owls around here! The bunny “condos” have a 3rd compartment that we were using to store their hay but we moved it and now Bun-Bun has his own space and can’t bully the others. I don’t know if bunny bullying is normal or what or if they really needed to be separated. What I do know is: It is all VERY entertaining. ;)
I will tell you a little story in return for your entertaining story about the rabbit equivalent of Earl…way back when my daughters were small and we lived on the other side of the country, we were picking our daughters up from their karate classes and as we walked out of the class with the girls we noticed a black rabbit sitting over in the car park. It was obviously tame and we walked up to it and patted it. We ended up picking it up and taking it home and we named it Baerwolf as we had been laughing about the rabbit in the Monty Python movie “The Holy Grail” where the rabbit jumps out and kills everyone after they have all laughed about it first as rabbits are meek and inconsequential. We had him for quite some time and in that time he bit everyone! He even bit my eldest daughter on the face and he bit my ankles whenever I hung washing out on the line. We ended up having to rehouse him as he wasn’t “pet” material at all and we soon learned why he had been abandoned in the car park. That rabbit would have survived anywhere. I think Bun-Bun may be a distant relative. Maybe you could get him neutered? It might stop the problems. Do they neuter rabbits?!
I’m sure “they” do neuter rabbits. That sounds a little pricey and involved to me however. Hhaha Great story and reminded me of a pun I saw when we were trying to think of a valentine’s bunny pun; EVERY BUNNY WAS KUNG-FU FIGHTIng!!! Hahahhaha Karate Bunny. Great story. Thanks for sharing. :)
Your newly turned beds look great. We’re not allowed to burn here, though sometimes I wish we could, esp. the lawn, to help reduce ticks.
Those bunnies are just the cutest! My favorite shot is the one with ‘Zilla and Butkus on the bench having a little quality time. ;)
Thanks! I am seriously in shock of how much progress we made. Part of me was thinking we might not even HAVE a garden this year (sooo busy with school/work). But Smoochie has gotten on the garden bandwagon and I am THRILLED!!! So now I am dreaming of tomatoes and pumpkins and not just perennials/herbs and whatever self sows! We probably aren’t really allowed to burn here in this capacity either but 1. we are rebels 2. We live on a dead end dirt road so no one would really ever notice/complain. :) haha The bunnies are so much fun! That was the first time we let them hop around the yard; so entertaining to watch. Thanks for the comments!
Wow! It must be warm….bare feet! Adorable photos. THanks for sharing.
So warm; definitely does not feel like February. Thanks for the comments!!
Enjoyed the bunny pictures! Looks like you all are off to a great start!
:)